20100822
reuters

LONDON (Reuters) - SABMiller, the world's second-largest brewer, is considering buying the beer operations of Foster's Group, Australia's biggest brewer, for about 7 billion pounds, the Sunday Times reported.

SABMiller is planning to buy Carlton & United Breweries, the beer making part of Foster's, the paper said.

A spokesman for SABMIller declined to comment.

Foster's could attract takeover bids of up to $10 billion from suitors including SABMiller and Japan's Asahi Breweries, after a long-awaited decision to split off its struggling wine business, Reuters reported in June.

Carlton & United Breweries, run by former navy weapons' engineer John Pollaers, generates around 85 percent of Foster's group earnings and has a profit margin of 38.5 percent.

SABMiller, the maker of Peroni and Miller Lite, gets about 85 percent of its profits from the emerging markets of Latin America, Africa and Asia.